you don't even know how to play an spriest. you CAN CLIP DOTS nowadays. they made that change in 4.0, you're just not supposed to let them fall off is all. even if you overwrite your old VT with a new one that doesn't have your trink buff, it doesn't matter, the last BUFFED tick will tick THEN will go to the new unbuffed VT

Is this true? So if I have 15 seconds left on VT and my buffs fall off and I reapply VT, will it still tick with buffed ticks for 15 seconds?

He meant that when you have a buffed VT ticking, and refresh it with a VT that is not buffed (or buffed lower) that the next tick will remain buffed, and then begin ticking with unbuffed values. Can think of it like this. A | is a buffed tick, a / is a unbuffed tick, and a - represents 1 unit of time between ticks.

| - | - | - | - | - | - / - /
___________^ Refresh in that window

I'm personally not 100% sure that's how it works, but really it's a pretty negligible effect, just interesting in how they implemented DoT refreshing.

If you have the proper information relayed to you through your UI its not that difficult. Just management of abilities. I went from a rogue to a spriest and found the challenge to be very rewarding compared to rogue rotation.

I recently went from being an Arcane Mage to a Shadow Priest in the past 6 weeks. I had a lvl 80 priest when I decided to switch from Mage to Priest. This was mainly because me and my younger brother both were mages, and I felt like I should reroll so he would get the mage gear first, while I would take other gear. Seeing as we both went back into raiding recently too.

Shadow priest is a great spec to play. At first it was a little weird checking out for dots, while I was used to checking out mana for different phases, and cooldowns etc.
With some addons such as Fortex, it made the dot timers a lot easier.
For gameplay I found the class really nice to actually play. It was different compared to the Mage, instead of having a small active cycle (Arcane blast, and cooldowns on burn phases), it gave a change when having to re-apply dots, knowing when to either throw in a Shadow word: Death, or move slightly to activate your Shadow Apprentises etc.

Luckily for me, I get Dark Intent on every time we raid. Unless our Warlock starts to act weird and decide to give it to a healer instead. Even after being told to hand it to me. So my DPS is easily on par with the rest of my group. My team sits at around 19k dps lowest, and 28k dps highest. I was sitting around 22-23k dps. But this week alone, I've picked up 3 pieces, so my dps would go up a slight bit. I was actually still raiding with a blue 316 ilvl wand untill Thursday just gone. (I dinged 85, about 6-7 weeks ago).
Those Dps numbers above, are from when I was my guilds worst geared player (368ilvl, now 376ilvl).

So, hopefully as soon as I get my 4part T12, I will be pushing forward a bit more with the DPS, and going from top 2-3 to our #1 spot. I've sometimes walked away with our #1 spot, and not just by a small amount. I've walked away with a much higher DPS, and damage done depending on the encounters.

In short, I would sugguest the Shadow Priest to be a great class, that offers a good challenge in learning, aswell it will give your team mates a challenge for the top spots on the meters.

---------- Post added 2011-11-21 at 01:34 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Malania

Idk, I spent about 10 minutes looking at Kilee's shadow guide a few weeks ago and was doing 30K+ after that. Obviously thats with heroic gear but its still in a good place atm.

Also, after briefly browsing through this thread and not seeing any questions regarding this, how is everyone's Target Dummy damage? Meaning no raid buffs, just self buffs. What kind of damage are you doing and what item level? I find myself sitting at 20.5-21k (maybe after 5-10 minutes of going at the dummy), which I feel is pretty low

AND to finally get to OP's questions:How awesome is Shadow for you? I absolutely love Shadow. I'm Shadow at heart and leveled as Shadow, but maining Disc for our raid (although I'm the healer that hops to DPS in my group). My priest is also my first char so clearly I'm biased. But between other DPSes I've played (just a Ret Pally and Boomkin), Spriests are my favorite by far. How competitive is it's DPS, for an average player? Depends, I suppose. If you know the basics of how to play this class, you would do relatively well. Of course, more reading up, more practice will make you better and make your DPS improve as well. I find that Spriest damage is extremely competitive right now.How rewarding is it for good performance? Well, good performance is always rewarding. But sometimes RNG can screw you over (damn you, orbs, damn you!) or possibly boost you pretty high. Consistency is what I find to be important, and utility. We may not have an awesome CC or anything, but knowing when to use Hymns (if needed), saving lives with Leap of Faith, or even shielding yourself for heaving incoming damage to help out the raid and healers can mean a lot. Sure maybe the last sentence isn't exactly your responsibility as a DPS, but helping your healers in a time of need is a wonderful thing. So to sum that up, as much as I enjoy just facerolling a boss like Baleroc, the most rewarding feeling would be saving a life, or preventing a wipe, as silly as it may seem.

I rerolled shadow a while ago. First i was a holy priest but at putricide progress, our guild lost their last shadow (a good one) and i was always impressed, how a shadow can be doing much dmg AND beeing a good supporter with his passive heal and spam shield like a disc, cast divinhe hymn and mana hymn and so on.

I hated it at the beginning cause tracking dots was not my strength but i wanted to play my priest on high lvl with every spec so i learned, used addons like "fortexorcist", read some shadowpriest.com and gained as much experience as i can.
Then i rerolled shadow and was nearly always the best dmg dealer in our raid (if not, top 3).

It was like "WOAH" and "doing dmg with shadow is really fun". I played a mage at the end of bc and it bored me the hell out of it with easy spam rotations but for shadow, you can do so much more dmg if you beeing really active with your procs.

How do spriests dps on trash? I mostly see them spam mind sear but im sure its more than that

- If it's a big single trash pull like a Molten Giant, you follow your typically DPS rotation (cooldowns optional)
- If it's a pack of 4 or less, put VT and SW:P on all the mobs and keep it rolling, put DP on your priority target. MF/MB or Mind Sear as filler.
- If the pack is larger than 4, Mind Sear Mind Sear Mind Sear the tank.

Originally Posted by unholytestament

You would think that after all these years people would have realized that the people at Blizzard aren't sorcerors and are hindered by technology just like the rest of us mortals.

Originally Posted by stormcall

I will never understand why so many people who quit can't just QUIT and move on, and instead feel the need to come tell everyone about it, as if they just won the $100 million jackpot.

- If it's a big single trash pull like a Molten Giant, you follow your typically DPS rotation (cooldowns optional)
- If it's a pack of 4 or less, put VT and SW:P on all the mobs and keep it rolling, put DP on your priority target. MF/MB or Mind Sear as filler.
- If the pack is larger than 4, Mind Sear Mind Sear Mind Sear the tank.

This.
Plus try to have ES up for packs that you Mind Sear.
And I am usually top 1-3 dps (on 25man) with this on trash. But I have to admit this could also be just due to me always using all available cooldowns, even on trash, while the rest of the raid might 'just' use their normal rotations.

From my experience of using one, they require a lot of awareness to get far ahead on the charts. Feels like the amount of awareness is to the point of focus fire on the boss because every time I don't pay attention for a few seconds, the only thing on the boss is SW:P. I guess I'm not paying attention, but I done well on classes with DoTs while avoid bad stuff (although Druids and Warriors are easier in that regard). Maybe I just need more practice.